Your first conversation with AI · Lesson 2

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Ask, then follow up

Open a new chat and send this first message. Wait for the answer.

Message one

I run a small bookshop and I want to start a monthly evening event for customers. Give me four ideas.

Now send this second message in the same chat. Notice what it does not contain: any mention of a bookshop, an evening, or the ideas it just gave you.

Message two, same chat

Take the second one and tell me what it would cost to run.

It knew which idea I meant by the second one
It knew we were still talking about a bookshop

That is a conversation rather than a series of questions. Everything earlier in the thread is still in front of it while it answers.

Lesson 02 · Getting started

By the end you can

Continue a conversation so the tool keeps what you already told it
Find new chat, history and settings in the tool you are using
Decide when to keep going and when to start again

What you need

The same tool you used in lesson 1. Free tier is fine. Nothing to install.

Fundamentals of AI

Find the edge of its memory

Now break it on purpose, because knowing where the boundary sits is more useful than knowing it exists. Start a completely new chat and send only the second message, with no first message before it.

Send this alone, in a brand new chat

Take the second one and tell me what it would cost to run.

What happened this time?

Check your own work0/3

It did not know what the second one referred to
It either asked me, or made something up
The other chat's thread was not there for it to pick up

A new chat starts with almost nothing. Whatever you established a moment ago in another thread is gone, unless your tool has a memory setting switched on, and even then it carries a little about you rather than the thread. Lesson 5 is where you test which. This trips people up constantly: they open a fresh chat out of tidiness and wonder why the answers got worse.

Find the three controls

Every one of the four tools has the same three things, in slightly different places. Find yours now, so you are not hunting for them mid-task later.

I found New chat. Often a button top left, or a pencil icon
I found my history, the list of past chats, usually in the sidebar
I found Settings. Often behind your name or initials, in a bottom or top corner

Open settings and look, without changing anything yet. There will be something about data, training or history in there. You will come back to it in lesson 7, when you decide what you are willing to put in.

Decide when to start again

Keeping one long thread is usually right, because everything you have set up stays in view. There are two moments when starting fresh is better.

Start a new chat when you switch to a genuinely unrelated task, or when the conversation has gone wrong enough that you keep correcting the same mistake. A thread that has drifted tends to keep drifting, because its own earlier answers are still sitting in front of it.

In your own words, when would you start a new chat?

Check your own work0/2

My answer mentions changing to a different subject, or a thread going wrong
I understand a new chat means re-explaining anything that mattered

Where that leaves you

You can hold a conversation now and you know where its memory stops. What you may have noticed is that the answers themselves were fine but generic, the sort of thing anyone with a bookshop might get. That is not the tool being limited. It is a consequence of how the question was asked, and lesson 3 is about fixing that.

Next: Asking for what you want